What’s the story?
Late Friday night U.S. time, former WWE announcer Jonathan Coachman took to Twitter in the aftermath of former Ronda Rousey’s devastating knockout loss to Amanda Nunes. Fielding questions about Rousey’s prospects in WWE if Rousey’s mixed martial arts career is over, he made it clear that he doesn’t think WWE would have much interest anymore.
In case you didn’t know...
Rousey is an unabashed hardcore pro wrestling fan, taking her nickname from Roddy Piper and growing up with legendary pro wrestler and judoka Gene Lebell as her “Uncle Gene.” WWE has shown obvious interest in her in the past, including using her in an angle with The Rock, Triple H, and Stephanie McMahon last year at WrestleMania 31.
But as long as she was splitting time between her career in the UFC and shooting movies, it didn’t look like there was much room in her life to do anything with WWE, even a one-off. The loss to Nunes last night at UFC 207, which seemingly signals the end of her MMA career, has led to the widespread discussion on social media of her future. WWE keeps coming up, which led to fans tweeting at Coachman, and as you can see, he shut them down.
For what it’s worth, emi-retired women’s MMA pioneer Shayna Baszler, who is part of Rousey’s “Four Horsewomen of MMA” group along with Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir, had a WWE tryout in September. Since there can be a long gap between tryouts and signing due to required medical testing, it may be a while before we now if she’s coming to WWE.
Heart of the matter:
Coachman tweeted as follows:
What’s next?
For the time being, probably not much. Rousey hasn’t gone completely silent the way she did after her previous loss, but she’s likely to take some time before she determines what she wants to do next, WWE or otherwise.
Sportskeeda’s take:
We probably need some distance before we know for sure just how right Coachman is. Looking at the situation as it is right now, he’s absolutely right that she needs to be rebuilt. The question of if rebuilding her is possible, whether done by Hollywood or her agents, is an open one right now. Unless Rousey comes out and says that she’s retreating from the public like, we can’t be 100% sure where her future lies anyway. But if Coachman is right about WWE, then what she wants may not matter much.
